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Thursday, November 24, 2011

Cultivating an "attitude of gratitude" is proving to have a beneficial effect on physical as well as mental health in addition to it's obvious spiritual connection.

Psychologist Robert Emmons of the University of California at Davis states that:

"Gratitude research is beginning to suggest that feelings of thankfulness have tremendous positive value in helping people cope with daily problems, especially stress, and to achieve a positive sense of the self."

Dr. Emmons found that in an experimental comparison, those who kept gratitude journals on a weekly basis exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical symptoms, felt better about their lives as a whole, and were more optimistic about the upcoming week compared to those who recorded hassles or neutral life events.

It is not about naturally having a grateful disposition, that goes against how our brains developed. We have been programed for survival to processes threat assessments and therefore we are alerted to negative situations about 3:1 over positive situations. It is, as Dr. Emmons research suggests, about developing a habit of being grateful irregardless of circumstances. It is about looking for things to be grateful for.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Thursday I will listen to Arlo Guthrie sing Alice's Restaurant again, all 18+ minuets of it, just as I have done for thirty or forty Thanksgivings.

But why is Alice's Restaurant so important to me? While recalling youthful memories and singing along with anti-war, anti-draft protest songs can be fun, Alice's Restaurant remains relevant to me for much deeper reasons. It is because the anti-war movement is still an important part of who I am.

Here it is thirty-seven years after getting my draft card during the last round of the Vietnam "draft lottery" and I am still preaching peace while wars continue to rage and our young men are still dieing on foreign soil.

That is why Alice's Restaurant remains so important to me. As long as our nation continues to send young men off to war I will be part of the anti-war movement.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

On Sept. 24, 2011 at a cemetery in Easton, PA, Maj. Bruce Lawrence was finally laid to rest on U.S. soil, approximately 43 years after his aircraft was shot down in Vietnam.

I can't believe that we are still burring our dead from the Vietnam War!

Today in a Washington Post article U.S. Air Force officials acknowledged that from 2003 to 2008 the Dover Air Force Base mortuary disposed of portions of troops’ remains (fragments and portions of body parts that were initially unidentified or were later recovered from the battlefield) by cremating them and dumping the ashes in a Virginia landfill.

Is this how we honor our fallen servicemen and women and their families?

We shouldn't be in these wars in the first place, but to literally dump their remains in a landfill shows just how "disposable" our brave men and women are to the warfare state!

Wednesday, November 09, 2011

In a show of support Tuesday, David Crosby and Graham Nash preformed at Occupy Wall Street, encouraging the crowd to "Keep going". Watch this Rolling Stone video with an interview of David and Graham on their way down to OWS.

Here is a two thousand year old warning to the 1% by the Apostle James:

And now, you rich people, listen to me! Weep and wail over the miseries that are coming upon you!

Your riches have rotted away, and your clothes have been eaten by moths. Your gold and silver are covered with rust, and this rust will be a witness against you and will eat up your flesh like fire.

You have piled up riches in these last days.

You have not paid any wages to those who work in your fields. Listen to their complaints! The cries of those who gather in your crops have reached the ears of God, the Lord Almighty.

Your life here on earth has been full of luxury and pleasure. You have made yourselves fat for the day of slaughter.(James 5:1-5)

The Hippie Christian Manifesto

Being A Hippie Christian

Being a Hippie Christian isn't how you dress or what you say as much as it is a total life style. To be a Hippie Christian requires an attitude of the heart that grows out of a personal encounter with the living Christ and overflows into your whole life. Jesus taught about peace and love. Jesus chose the outcasts, He loved the unlovely, He reached out to the rejects. Jesus taught about getting back to the Garden, about having a personal relationship with the Creator of the universe.

For some ancient wisdom on how to live the Hippie Christian life please read Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

About Me

Just an old Long Hair Hippie Jesus Freak from the 60's!
My Hippie name "Cloud" was given to me back in the early 1970's by a Brother in the Lord who called me Cloud because every where he went he would run into me, at the store, the bank, on the street. I seemed to be always following him about like a little black rain cloud, so that became my name - Cloud.
During the Jesus People Movement it was quite normal to be a Hippie and a Christian. I never thought that I had to choose one over the other, for me being a Hippie and a Christian were not mutually exclusive experiences.
Most of us don't like labels, but I have always considered my self to be both, never one or the other. I am a Hippie Christian, a Christian Hippie, a Long Hair Hippie Jesus Freak, whatever - I am just one of God's colorful kids!

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Peace, Love and Light!

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give it to you as the world gives it. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." ~Jesus (John 14:27)

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! (1John 3:1)

That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. (John 1:9)